Architectures for 'richer' web applications

Now that JavaOne is over (not that I got to go) and we are all more up-to-date with where Java is going, I have a simple question: as Java developers are we in a better position to develop web applications that offer a richer user experience? To this end I have developed a simple test scenario:

test scenario

I have a service that can provide the metadata for several thousand items (id, title, creation date, status, etc) and a service that can deliver an HTML description giving further details of an item specified by its id. I want to develop a web application that displays the metadata in a table on the left (allowing the user to resize, reorder columns etc) and the HTML description of a 'selected' item on the right. When the user selects a row in the table, the HTML description on the right is updated. As a complication the description may also reference zero or more other items. Selecting one of these links should update the both the description and reset the selection in the table.

I can imagine a number of responses:

  • Java WebStart: create a WebStart application using the JDNC table component and the JDIC browser component. The interaction between the two components would be defined in Java. While I have no doubt this would provide a fine user interface, I suspect that WebStart solutions are just not percieved as being 'standard' web apps.
  • JSF: create a web app using some [yet to be developed?] table JSF component. Altough a JSF table may be able to handle the reodering of columns and the like, the concern is round-tripping to the server each time to deliver a large table.
  • something else... my preference would be for a JDNC table component embedded in one frame (as an applet) and the item's HTML description displayed in a second frame and have the interaction between the two defined in Javascript.

Currently the last solution is not possible because JDNC components cannot be scripted. My understanding is that the resources were not there to both develop the components and a scripting solution. This post is something of a test to see whether there is any interest in trying to plug that gap.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Review of hReview

microformats may well represent a path from where we are today to the [lowercase] semantic web. If so, one of the first waypoints along such a path could be the emergence of aggregators capable of taking advantage of suitably marked-up content. Applying a 'microformat' approach to tagging, Technorati introduced the rel="tag" approach to marking-up tags. Technorati also supply the corresponding aggregation service, e.g. see posts tagged with microformat . Given this minimalist approach to tagging, the hReview specification comes as something of a surprise. It seems to represent a format developed independently of the environment in which it is most likely to be used. The rel="tag" approach makes a major, simplifying assumption. This is that the tag refers 'to a major portion of the current page (i.e. a blog post)' . I am assuming that it could apply equally to a blog entry in an RSS/Atom feed. Thus an aggregator can associate a tag with two p...
Read more

SmartLink

Image
In a previous post I tried to describe how I thought technologies like SmartTags and AutoLink ought to behave. With greasemonkey in Firefox I've been able to build a proof-of-concept demonstrator. For the moment I'm calling it Smart Tag/Auto Link. SmartLink is based upon the idea that content authors should mark-up content that can be 'smart-linked', using standard XHTML constructs. This has two advantages: it effectively provides an 'opt-in' mechanism for content providers it doesn't require 'magic' to identify what can be smart-linked and thus provides a much more extensible approach. of course there is one fairly major disadvantage: there isn't any suitably marked-up content out there, with the exception of some test posts I've put together for the purpose. Getting Started If you want to know a bit more about SmartLink then click here . Alternatively if you want to see how SmartLink behaves and you're using Firefox t...
Read more

Google I/O 2013

With Google I/O approaching it is time to start speculating... Last year the keynotes at Google I/O were very different in tone; the one for Android and the one for Chrome OS. It will be interesting to see if there is any big change this year, now that Sundar Pichai will - indirectly - have a role in both. Google's commitment to the web and the evolution of Chrome has taken them to an extraordinary place.  Soon it will be possible to develop apps using standard web technologies and deploy them to a wide range of environments; desktops running OS X, Linus or Windows as well as Chrome OS. There seems to be a genuine desire to get Chrome apps to play nice in their host environments, not just within the browser. For example the launcher that was part of Chrome OS now has a variant in some desktop environments. The Chromebook Pixel has a touch screen, so developing Chrome apps for a touch interface is clearly on the agenda. So isn't it about time for Chrome apps on Android...
Read more